Short answers. The methodology and sources pages have the full working.
10 answers
bythenumbers is a free UK website that turns a postcode into one transparent Area Measure out of 100, plus the published figures behind it: schools, transport, flood risk, broadband, house prices, amenities, green space, healthcare, air quality and council tax. It is not a property listings site.
Yes. The public area reports are free to use, and there is no plan to put a paywall in front of them.
The measure is a weighted average of category figures, each built from a published UK government or open dataset. Missing categories are dropped rather than counted against an area. The full formula, weights and version history are on the methodology page.
No. The measure is published infrastructure and environmental data. It does not measure the people who live there, house prices as a marker of status, or safety. A lower figure means more of the measured categories sit below typical UK levels, not that the area or its residents have been ranked. We will not tell you an area is bad, because that is not what the data can tell you.
Every figure comes from data the UK public sector already publishes, including HM Land Registry, Ofsted, the Environment Agency, Ofcom, NHS England, the ONS and Ordnance Survey. Each dataset is credited on the sources page with its licence.
Yes. You can search a full postcode such as SW1A 1AA, a district such as M1, or a town name. Every place has a permanent page that can be bookmarked or shared.
No. Reports end with links to Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket for that postcode. We do not compete on listings.
No. bythenumbers provides general information from published open data. It is not financial, legal, survey or property valuation advice. Check anything that matters to your decision with the relevant authority.
We show recorded incidents from police.uk as context only: a mix of home, person, street and other categories, a rate per 1,000 residents, and whether counts rose or fell over 12 months. We do not publish a crime score or call an area unsafe. Recorded crime never enters the Area Measure. Scotland is not in this dataset yet.
Designated flood warning and alert zones are mapped areas from the Environment Agency. They appear on postcode reports and are what the flood category measure uses, including in dry weather. Live alerts and warnings are what is in force today in England. They are shown as a status overlay and do not change the 0-100 flood figure or the Area Measure. This feed does not yet cover Scotland or Northern Ireland. For the official warning, use GOV.UK Check for flooding.
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